Chris Hedges

Why cant the God-people and the atheists just get along?

Stephen C. Meyer of Seattles Discovery Institute showed up during my freshman year at SPU to give a careful and, dare I say it, elegant, critique of current theories in evolution. He concluded that any gaps in the theory of evolution proved that God exists (the Judeo-Christian god, to be specific). This is a little like saying that since I didnt see how our office walls were just painted, it was clearly a magical elf who came in over the weekend. On the flip side, Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) argues that if you cant empirically prove the existence of God, theres no such thing. Enter Chris Hedges with I Dont Believe in Atheists (Free Press, $25), in which he describes the more vocal proponents of strict atheism as little more than secular fundamentalists. Think science, politics, and God need to return to their separate corners? Find your home in the anti-extremist pages of Hedges work. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, www.townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. LAURA ONSTOT